One of my favorite writers is David Foster Wallace. He committed suicide in 2008. This commencement address might be the best thing I’ve read by him. The irony is heavy—and I don’t mean in relation to his suicide— that the whole speech is more like a pep talk to himself. However, this makes his death even more tragically selfish: he somehow lost the struggle with his own “default setting.”
Note: I deleted the speech text. Although it was a public speech, apparently the new book publisher wants to make a buck, which I won’t fault them for. I have not been contacted, but others hosting the text have apparently. Sorry…
[...] In May of 2005, Wallace gave the Commencement Address at Kenyon College’s 167th graduation ceremony. A transcription of the speech is currently available here. [...]
Pingback by Infinite Summer » Blog Archive » Warming Up — June 10, 2009 @ 4:05 am
[...] the answer to this seriously thought-provoking post from the fantastic blog Life’s a Pitch is this seriously amazing speech by the late David Foster Wallace. Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a [...]
Pingback by Really Quickly… | The Wrong End of a Telescope — June 13, 2009 @ 9:39 pm
[...] the source of the title: DFW’s commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005, published as This is Water (it gets harder and harder to find on the web). Anyway, I sent it to my brother for his graduation [...]
Pingback by test « pura pinche agua (DFW and sailing) — June 17, 2009 @ 2:41 am
[...] Dan H Reference [...]
Pingback by NYC/SoP « Sentry Down — June 24, 2009 @ 2:24 pm
Speech is available here: http://web.archive.org/web/20080213082423/http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html
Comment by Andrew Saulters — August 19, 2009 @ 10:51 pm